Content Background for Night

Define the following terms:

1. Anti-Semitism:

2. Genocide:

3. Crematorium:

4. Liberation:

HISTORY: After World War I, the German state was in disarray. During this time of turmoil, the Nazi party was formed. It made use of deep-seated anti-Semitism in its rise to power. The Nazis gained popularity by blaming Jews for everything that was wrong with Germany, including the loss of WWI.

Adolf Hitler’s systematic persecution of the Jews began as soon as he took office as chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Within a few weeks, Jews had been fired from government jobs and university positions and the first and largest of the Nazi concentration camps (Aushcwitz) was established. Over the next five years, Jews were steadily stripped of their rights. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws took away their citizenship and outlawed intermarriage with other Germans. By September 1939, when Hitler’s invasion of Poland plunged Europe into WWII, thousands of German Jews were already in concentration camps. They were forbidden to own land or businesses and could not send their children to public schools.

Early in WWII, Adolf Eichmann was in charge of devising an efficient system for the mass extermination of Jews, Gypsies, the physically and mentally handicapped, and other undesirables. Motorized trucks called gas vans were used at the start. As Jews were arrested, they were forced into these vans that were then driven to remote areas where lethal gas was pumped into the windowless interior. The Nazi leadership was dissatisfied with the small number of Jews that could be eliminated by this method, so the infamous gas chambers were installed at the camps. The gas chambers were designed to look like showers, and the buildings were surrounded by rose gardens. The prisoners were told they were going to take showers. Once masses of people were in the chambers, lethal gas called Cyclon B was dispersed through the shower heads. This deadly poison could kill about 2,000 children and adults within twenty minutes. This method resulted in the deaths of approximately four million women and children in Auschwitz alone. The closing months of WWII were a time of dreadful suspense and became the worst phase of the incredible murders. Because the camps were located in Eastern Europe, the hopes of the captives seemed to lie with the advance of the Russian Red Army. Though facing utter defeat, Hitler escalated the madness, ordering greater numbers of Jews and other undesirables thrown into the furnaces and killing still more inmates in brutal forced marches to the west. Consequently, Wiesel, like so many others, was forced so far to the west that when liberation finally came, it was at the hands of the American troops.

Culture: Students often ask questions as these: How could it happen? Why didn’t the Jews run away? Why didn’t they fight? Why didn’t non-Jews do something?

At first, many Jews did flee, some doing so as soon as Hitler came to power. From 1933 to 1942, about 150,000 European Jews emigrated to the United States—a tiny fraction of the millions who were in danger. A major reason that more Jews did not come to the United States was that U. S. immigration restrictions kept them out. Jews encountered the same restrictions when attempting to enter other Western nations, as well. And even when a Jewish family found a country that would accept it, family members still had a difficult time obtaining exit visas and other documents from Nazi- controlled officials.

The question of Jewish resistance is complex. Armed resistance was difficult for a minority that made up less that 1 percent of the population of any country except Poland. Once it became clear that Hitler was bent on genocide, there was armed resistance, especially in the ghettos of Poland. The best- known example is the Warsaw ghetto. Of the 400,000 Jews originally crammed into the ghetto, most had been deported or had succumbed to disease or hunger by the time the uprising took place in the spring of 1943. With a few stolen weapons and handmade bombs, 60,000 half-starved Jews held out for a month against the German Army’s tanks, flame throwers, and assault troops. A few of the ghetto fighters managed to escape, but the overwhelming majority died in the fighting or were captured by the Germans and quickly executed.

This kind of resistance was impossible in concentration camps where inmates faced such overwhelming odds. Instead, resistance took the form of sabotage and murder, although there were also uprisings at several of the camps.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that with the exception of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and England, far too little was done to help the Jews. Large segments of the population failed to help the Jews, and many even collaborated with the Germans. The governments including the United States and the Catholic Church failed to act or even to speak out against the barbarism

People murdered: More than eleven million men, women, and children

Jewish murdered: Six million Jewish men, women, and children

Jewish Children murdered: One and a half million